Summary: Voting is a Christians Responsibility

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

This morning I want to talk about a subject that affects us all, involves us all, often divides us and we often avoid it like the plague! Pastors don’t like to talk about it because it often causes trouble and division. People are often more passionate about their views of this subject than they are about their religion. By now you may have guessed that I am talking about government and politics.

A few weeks ago someone came to me and asked me to preach on this subject. After praying about it, I felt like the Lord wanted me to share it as well. I think the reason is that we have been convinced it is a taboo subject. That is contrary to what our country was founded on and what our forefathers thought. Do you know that all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Christians? The two signers the world always uses to refute that is Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who claimed to be Deists. Both were member of the Episcopalian Church and both spoke strongly for Christ and religion at times. They may have matured in their beliefs or been misrepresented. I don’t know. But I know Jefferson had a bill passed to send missionaries to the Native Americans. Imagine! Tax dollars used for religious purposes! Franklin called the political debaters to stop for prayer. Doesn’t sound like non-religious people to me!

Many of the signers of the Declaration were trained as ministers, but at the time of the signing of the Declaration, only a few were active in ministry. For example John Witherspoon was serving as a minister at that time; Robert Treat Paine served as a military chaplain during the Revolution. His father was a pastor; and Lyman Hall had served as a minister before the Revolution. There are many others who should also be recognized for their ministry work, including Francis Hopkinson, a church music director and choir leader who edited a famous American hymnbook; Roger Sherman, who wrote the doctrinal creed for his denomination in Connecticut; Benjamin Rush, who started Sunday School in America and founded the country’s first Bible Society; James Wilson, who had been trained as a clergyman in Scotland but became an attorney, teaching students the Biblical basis of civil law; and many others. In fact, at least 29 of the 53 signers had been trained in schools whose primary purpose was the preparation of ministers. Does that sound like separation of church and state? I don’t think so. In fact, the predominate feeling was that it was a Christians duty to be involved politically.